U.S.AVENGERS & BATMAN Lead January Comic Book Sales to a Mixed Start to 2017

Comic book sales for January 2017 were slightly up versus January last year and graphic novel sales were way down, so 2017 Direct Market comic books sales are starting slightly down in the dollar category and a little up in the unit category versus 2016.

According to sales figures released by Diamond Comic Distributors Friday morning, Marvel's U.S.Avengers #1 was the bestselling comic book of last month, outpacing the latest two issues of DC's Batman (#14-15) and Justice League/Power Rangers #1. The only non-Marvel-DC title to crack the top 10 was Image's The Walking Dead #162 in the 5th position. Otherwise DC dominated the Top 10 scoring six titles to Marvel's three to Image's one.

Credit: DC Comics

DC's Batman Vol. 1: I Am Gotham was the bestselling graphic novel of the month.

DC's top of the chart dominance did not hold up overall, however. Marvel, who shipped 130 new comic book and graphic novel titles to Direct Market stores in January to DC's 112, held onto its mostly-usual positions atop the Market Share charts. They led all publishers with 37.09% in January dollar sales, and 42.62% of unit sales. DC accounted for 28.93% of dollar sales and 31.33% of unit sales. Image's totals were 9.82% and 9.39%, respectively.

For the month, comic book retailers ordered 7.21% more comic book units compared to January 2016, but perhaps partially due to DC Comics' lower"Rebirth" price point that represented just a 0.36% rise in dollars. And because graphic novel sales were down 11.88% in dollar sales, that means overall unit sales for January start up 6.01% versus last year, but down 3.41% in overall dollars.

Comichron credits a Marvel overship promotion offering a free 10% match to retailers' orders for the disparity between dollar and unit sales, reporting it "helped create a situation in which more comics were shipped than in any first month of the year since January 1997, 20 years ago."

"Diamond shipped 7.57 million comic books to retailers in the month, up 7.21% over January 2016 and even beating out 2015's massive Star Wars #1 month, reports Comichron. "Free comics obviously don't impact dollar sales, so comics dollar sales were only up 0.36%. That disjoint suggests that while January's performance was off at the distributor level, it could easily have been an up month at the retail level, depending on how all that extra material sold."

The January 2017 Market Share, Comparative Sales Data, and New Titles Shipped charts, along with Top 10 Comic Books and Top 10 Graphic Novels charts follow below.